Posts Tagged ‘Abortion’

Where are the leaders?

Where are the leaders – the people who can and will lead the United States of America out of the open grave we have been thrown into by the “leaders” of the last fifty years?

Where are the passionate, honest and humble men and women who know that government running every aspect of our lives is a recipe for misery and slavery?

Where are the men and women who will place themselves under the media spotlight without a crippling need for acceptance, because they understand that the media do not share, and will never share, their values?

Where are the men and women who will laugh in the faces of liberal hacks and counterfeit intellectuals with their cries of “racist” and other cheap, cowardly epithets, and call them out as the frauds and liars they are?

What follows is the speech I want to hear from a candidate who believes himself to be one of the real leaders – one who will help us to climb out of that open grave, rather than throwing in smaller shovelfuls of dirt, and telling us everything will be fine, if we just relax and embrace the darkness.

My fellow citizens:

I want to save this country. I can save this country. I need to save this country.

We are sinking into serfdom. Our government has broken the bonds the Founders wisely put on in our Constitution, and it is becoming our master, rather than our servant.

In the unending effort to buy permanent power, our government has plunged us into debt and inserted itself into every aspect of our lives.

While it pursues permanent power, our government neglects its most urgent and legitimate responsibilities. It fails at protecting the weak against the strong, and at protecting our nation against foreign and domestic enemies. It fails at protecting our rights and property against unlawful seizure and against unlawful restrictions on what we may do in and with our own property.

In fact, government has aggressively pursued the destruction of our right to own property, and to do with that property what we wish, thus rendering the right to own property nearly meaningless.

I must tell you, my fellow Americans, that once government has rendered meaningless the right to own property, we all become the property of government. The most important difference between a slave and a free person is the right to own property and to do with it, while protecting the rights of one’s neighbors, as one wishes.

I will reverse this endless expansion of government power.

I will nominate judges to the federal bench and to the supreme court, who will treat their oaths to uphold the Constitution literally. I will ask Congress to impeach judges who violate this oath.

I will pare down drastically the bloated regulatory bureaucracy that is choking off our freedom and our ability to prosper.

On my first day in office, I will fire “czars” that are unaccountable to the people and who are openly hostile to freedom, and who have no basis for authority in the Constitution.

I will ask Congress to abolish entire executive branch agencies and departments that have no basis in the Constitution, and no goal but their own self-perpetuation and expansion of influence.

The unborn, the sick and the elderly – the weakest and most innocent among us — are fortunate, these days, if we allow them to live. The fortunate survivors are those who were not killed because they were inconvenient, embarrassing, expensive, or evidence of a crime.

Our government has, instead, made these innocents legitimate prey for the predators who will make themselves rich and advance their lethal, utopian ideals by killing them.

I will sign legislation that makes abortion and euthanasia illegal under federal law, and I will speak unflinchingly to the States, from the bully pulpit that is the presidency, urging them to do the same. I will ask Congress to send me a bill that removes taxpayer dollars from any program, foreign or domestic, that funds abortion or euthanasia. I will sign that bill into law immediately, before American taxpayers can be forced to pay for one more innocent’s death.

A citizen’s life is a citizen’s property, and the right to own that property is basic, without which no other right matters. The right to life subsumes the right to choose one’s own medical care, and to pay for it as one wishes. The current level of government interference in this right is intolerable, and illegal.

I will revoke any executive orders intended to advance Obamacare, and I will consider the federal court ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional as binding. I will immediately revoke the authority of any executive branch agency, board or other bureaucratic structure put in place by preceding administrations to support or enforce this law.

I will instruct Congress to send me legislation repealing Obamacare completely, and I will then ask Congress to begin structuring legislation that will unleash the private sector to revolutionize health care while dramatically reducing costs and increasing the range of options available to consumers.

I would expect this legislation to include a gradual transition over several years from government-funded — and government-restricted – health care for the aged and for those who are incapable for providing for themselves. Medicare must be replaced incrementally with private medical care that patients who are capable of it can pay for themselves, as medical care was dispensed for hundreds of years before this bloated, self-destructive program came into existence. The indigent and disabled must be protected, and they will be. Those who can pay all or a share of their health care costs, though, should do so.

Contrary to the lies you are being told by the Left, this does not mean my administration would throw the sick, the elderly or the indigent out in the street to die uncared for. That is a lie, and the liars know it. What the liars are not telling you, is that Medicare and Social Security are both utopian schemes that bought a lot of votes in their day, but their day is over. We simply can’t pay for them any longer.

Let me say that again: Medicare and Social Security are both about to run out of money. If we shut our eyes to this stubborn fact, Medicare and Social Security will still be out of money very soon, and our nation’s sorry financial state will soon prevent us from borrowing any more from Communist China to keep them afloat.

Tell me, my fellow Americans, what will happen to the sick when our government-driven health care system no longer has money to care for them? Rationing. It is happening now, in every country that foolishly believed it could nationalize its health care and not face the same, inevitable consequences.

Care is being withheld, and patients are being allowed to die from neglect and by the withdrawal of basic life support. They are starving and dying of thirst in their unchanged, soiled beds. If their families do not bring them food and change their linens, they lie in their own wastes and die, slowly and in great discomfort. This is the fate of those the Left is supposedly defending against their allegedly greedy, heartless critics.

Those who are so often vocal in their expressions of compassion and concern for the sick, are the liars who cannot face the consequences of their own lies. The helpless victims, however, face those consequences daily. This is what happens when government takes away the property right of citizens to care for their own lives. They become slaves.

What government gives, government can take away – including life, itself.

This nation has a history of decades of government encroachment into our lives, decades of spending money we do not have, decades of gradually surrendering our sovereignty to creditors and to those who think we should not have borders, decades of growing generations of government dependents, decades of failing to educate our citizens in basic skills, history and analytical thinking.

We cannot reverse this disastrous course overnight. But, we must begin immediately, shouldering the burden and working against the pain that will result, because if we do not change course, we will die as a nation, just as surely as the sick will die under national health care.

We must change course. And we will.

I want to save this country. I can save this country. I need to save this country.

But, I cannot do it alone. I must have your help and support. Now, and after the election, I must have your support and your trust. With your help, and with the Lord’s guidance, we will save this country. We must save this country. We owe it to ourselves and to our posterity.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention. Now, let’s get to work.

“Give us money, so we can re-elect spineless leaders to ignore you until next election.”

I just got an email from the RNC, begging for money, again. I get them all the time, but, as I sometimes do, I will respond to this one in an “open letter” format.

The immediate trigger for this open letter was reading the following paragraph:

Nothing would make The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Huffington Post happier than printing articles in April that the Republican Party is finished because the RNC’s Federal Election Commission first quarter report showed us lagging behind in donations from our nationwide network of conservative grassroots supporters.

Herein we find one of the stupidest things the Stupid Party believes: That we should give a damn what The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Huffington Post thinks.

A pathetic and pointless desire for approval from these left-leaning media hacks is one of the most glaring weaknesses of the Stupid Party “leadership.” This “leadership” has brought us to this precipice, over which is a socialist autocracy in which the Constitution is an irrelevant, historical curiosity.

If the “leadership” had rejected the $105 Billion land mine in the continuing resolution that funds the implementation of the obscenity known as Obamacare; if it had rejected the taxpayer subsidy for killing unborn children to be handed to Planned Parenthood; if it had rejected taxpayer funding of the government’s left-wing propaganda organ, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, there might be a whisper of a chance I would give the RNC a dime.

Of course, none of that happened. The “leadership” in the House won’t even come down firmly in favor of not raising the debt limit – let alone on introducing the kinds of spending cuts that would really make a difference in the long run, and that would signal to American taxpayers and the world that there is any seriousness about getting us out of debtor-nation slavery.

What sorts of cuts am I talking about? How about defunding Obamacare, the Department of Education, the EPA’s “cap and trade” scam, the FCC’s initiative to regulate the Internet and shut down talk radio, all foreign aid to countries that routinely fund terrorism and discriminate against Christians, and – yes, I’m saying it – the Cowboy Poetry Festival. That is just a tiny percentage of the wasteful and self-destructive government activity we can do without.

Individual Republican candidates may see some small change from me, if there is any left over after buying gas and inflated groceries, but RNC, don’t hold your breath.

If you care so much about what The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Huffington Post think, ask them for money.

“’The filibuster should be relegated to the extreme circumstances, and I don’t think Elena Kagan represents that,’ said Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”—AP article carried on breitbart.com

Will someone please point out to me a Republican with a spine, anywhere in a senior position of responsibility in Congress?

Senator Jon Kyl clearly is not one. Senator Kyl, if intercepting this left-wing hack of an Obama nominee on a clear trajectory to a lifetime appointment to the US Supreme Court is not “extreme circumstances,” what the hell is?

It’s only the judicial entity you and your colleagues have negligently entrusted with the power to say the United States Constitution is whatever they say it is at a given moment, that’s all. What little public record she has includes hostility to the military and free speech, and a fondness for abortion. Will you be astonished if she is also hostile to the Second Amendment and the other nine articles of the Bill of Rights? If you are, you are as clueless as you are spineless.

Does anyone understand why a Republican “leader” would roll over and play dead on such an issue even before hearings have begun? Is anyone surprised that the Tea party people and other grassroots conservatives and constitutionalists have turned their backs on the Republican Party “leaders?”

These eunuchs will make nice while the Socialist Democrats guide our country into the twilight, as a failed, post-constitutional, pseudo-European socialist state with no history and no future, and a debt to the Chinese that will make us their wholly-owned subsidiary.

For decades, the government has been telling you that you’re stupid. Are you too stupid to get tired of that?

You are too stupid to buy a car you can afford, and one that gives you and your family a chance of surviving a collision, rather than one that will crush like a paper bag because it had to lose weight to meet CAFE standards.

You are too stupid to manage your own health care. You need the government to choose your doctor, and to determine if, what, when and how you will receive medical care; and whether you and your loved ones will die because their care is too expensive, or rationed to those in a more favored political class.

You are too stupid to decide for yourself what the truth is, so government will decide who gets to use “public” airwaves to tell you what to think.

You are too stupid to buy a toilet that flushes the first time, a light bulb that doesn’t contain poisons you need a HAZMAT team to dispose of, or to set your thermostat to a comfortable temperature, just because you are the one paying the utility bills.

You are too stupid to distinguish honest expression of news and opinion appearing on the Internet from scams and lies, so government will move in, as in China, and allocate Internet access to the sources that get bureaucratic blessings.

You are too stupid to know how stupid racism is – especially of you are white, or non-white but conservative – so you need government to impose racist standards on hiring, college admissions and just about everything else.

You are too stupid to be responsible for your children’s education. You don’t have an education school degree, so you are not qualified to provide your children with moral education, let alone to home-school them. Government will provide them with all the knowledge and wisdom they need, thank you very much. And government will encourage your children to bring their wisdom home and lecture you for not buying a hybrid deathtrap car and for running too much hot water, and for not standing whenever Barack Obama appears on TV.

You are too stupid to examine the actual positions of political candidates and decide for yourself, based on those positions, which are more qualified for office. Instead, you need government to restrict the right to run for office to members of one or the other establishment political party. “Independents” and “third parties” should get every possible obstacle thrown in their way, because you are too stupid to see their names on the ballot. The burden of choice would overload your stunted intellect, and you would be incapable of making the right decision.

You are FAR too stupid to own a firearm, because firearms, all by themselves, cause crime and suicide. You are incapable of learning which end of the gun the round comes out of, or how the unload a weapon and make it safe, or how to distinguish a home invader seconds away from crashing through your front door from your mother-in-law getting a midnight snack.

Some of us are at the end of our patience with genuinely stupid, selfish, socialist, statist do-gooders telling us we are the stupid ones.

Despite a flurry of denials, the stubborn facts about Obamacare (formerly Hillarycare) include the following. Without limiting the expenditure of health care resources by denying care to some people, even taxing the “rich” 100% of what they make every year will not pay for a government-run health care monopoly. Even putting a $100 tax on every pack of cigarettes and on every quarter-pounder with cheese still won’t cover it.

We already know the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress heavily favor abortion. They would mandate child sacrifice if they could get away with it, and there is no reason to believe they won’t try it, some day. They will call it mercy, but death will ensue. And Obamacare will be spared the need to care for a few million unlived lives.

At the other end of life, Obama and his appointees in charge of creating and fleshing out this “public option” (read: you get your medical care from the government monopoly, or you go without, or both, in some cases – your option) are quite fond of preaching that there is some maximum age beyond which humans have little or no value, and thus no entitlement to medical treatment, except for “palliative care,” “comfort care,” “assisted suicide,” or outright, involuntary euthanasia – what used to be called “murder.”

Yes, fellow baby boomers, our most valuable contribution to the Hope and Change era will be to die soon, at minimal cost, and with minimal fanfare.

Were you born between 1946 and 1965? Get in line. You qualify. Show up at the Josef Mengele End of Life Care Center with your picture ID and living will, and don’t worry about cab fare home. You will be joined in line by the chronically and terminally ill of all ages, as soon as their medical bills hit the preset limit.

Just one question: Will our great leaders really lead on this effort to save the “public option?” Hah. Just kidding. We already know they have no intention of allowing themselves to be subjected to Obamacare. Their health care needs will continue to be met by the best and brightest in the medical community, in the poshest and most comfortable of settings, with no expense spared.

Some of these “leaders” have confronted a life-threatening illness which can only be diagnosed and treated by the most expensive means. What if they were to lead by example? Would they volunteer to cut costs by accepting some genteel form of suicide, or “palliative care,” or would they just let the rest of us step up and make the sacrifices?

How about the members of the most exclusive club in America, the United States Senate?

According to Wikipedia, “[a]s of June 30, 2009, 1 Senator is in his 90s, 3 are in their 80s, 19 are in their 70s, 36 are in their 60s, 32 are in their 50s, 9 are in their 40s, and 0 are in their 30s.”

Their list of Senatorial birthdays includes a grand total of one – that’s right, one – member born after the baby boomer era. Forty-eight of them were born before the beginning of the boomer era. Forty-six of the 100 members of the Senate are 65 or older. If they had to live with Obamacare, some of them would not live very long.

We know about Senator Edward Kennedy’s (age: 77) life-threatening illness. Has he decided to get in line with other Massachusetts residents in similar circumstances, and begin receiving “palliative care?” I haven’t heard about it.

Senator Arlen Specter also has a life-threatening illness. How about some “comfort measures,” Senator? No? Well, you must not agree with the eugenics (Oops! Sorry, they call it “bioethics,” these days) experts in the Obama Czar Corps that your life isn’t worth as much, because of your age (79 years), as that of a 25-year-old, and thus, that you should not receive expensive medical treatment.

Former senator Joe Biden is 65, this year. Shouldn’t he step aside and let a younger man be the vice president? Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, would be next in the line of succession to be president after Biden, according to the Constitution, but she’s 69. Statistically, there are bound to be some health time bombs ticking in that Botox-riddled body. Some of them could be expensive. Shouldn’t Madame Speaker make an appointment at the Mengele Center, too?

And, how about senators Robert Byrd (91); Frank Lautenberg (85); Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka (both 84)? Surely, they have lived long, rich lives, and should be willing to step aside (way aside) and let younger Americans have the benefit of the medical care these Senators would otherwise receive. A little end-of-life counseling, gentlemen?

Too bad the people trying to ram socialism down our throats aren’t subject to the hideous results of their decisions. They might take the trouble to read those thousand-page bills, don’t you think?

I’d like to thank the Republican National Committee for inspiring this post.

Yes, I got another of their “surveys,” today. They must not pay much attention to the ones people send back unless they also contain a donation, which mine have not for about a decade.

Just so the RNC knows I’m not just spouting off on somebody else’s “census,” here’s my survey’s special, secret registration number:

051680-790130

509576472

I’d give you my individually-issued “Voter District Code,” but I’d have to kill you.

I can only stand to plod through a few representative questions, because so many of them are focused on the trivial, while ignoring the monstrous. My replies, all of which go well beyond the largely meaningless “yes” or “no” options, follow each question.

Now, on to the “census document”!

ECONOMIC ISSUES

1) Should we unite as a party to oppose President Obama’s huge tax increase on the American people, particularly the new tax on dividends, capital gains and small businesses?

As much as I would like to help out those who receive dividends, et al, I am really more concerned about the free-fall path to a socialist dictatorship the Republican “leadership” has offered to Obama, by lying down and letting him and the Democrats walk over them like a cheap doormat.

This passive acceptance of socialism and wholesale violation of the Constitution (heard of it, Republicans?) got a real boost under “your” President, George W. Bush, and would have continued under McCain.

Remember the Bush prescription drug welfare program – up to then, the biggest single expansion of government spending since LBJ? Remember “No Child Left Behind,” taking an already-invalid public education system and saddling it with a huge backpack full of federal mandates and no way to pay for them? Gross negligence on securing our national borders? Micromanaging (and largely handcuffing) the military in Iraq and elsewhere? And, as a last hurrah, how about that financial sector bailout, courtesy of George W. Bush, the “compassionate conservative?”

With that for recent history, who could be surprised that Republicans in Congress have rolled over and let Obama put the wholesale government violations of the Constitution into overdrive? Has it escaped your notice, RNC, that Obama has nationalized two auto manufacturers, and appointed 30-some “czars” – unconstitutional, unaccountable, un-vetted and unqualified in any respect other than as cronies of The One — to run nearly every aspect, of our economy and personal lives? Why haven’t you Republicans walked out of Congress in protest, and gathered en masse on the Capitol steps to declare you would be no part of such an outrage? If you did, I missed it. The last time you showed that much backbone was during the “Drill here, drill now” campaign, which was encouraging, but oh, so brief.

DOMESTIC ISSUES

Is the Republican National Committee so morally bankrupt, cowardly, so self-serving and/or so terminally stupid that it needs to be TOLD to oppose illegal immigration, “card check,” trial lawyer welfare, a taxpayer-funded, Obama-worshiping corps of brainwashed, brownshirt thugs, and the “fairness doctrine” censorship program for all media, including the Internet?

Okay, that isn’t an actual question, but it should have been. Unfortunately, the short answer is, “Yes.” Over the last hundred years, it has become obvious that Republicans include a large contingent of progressives who share Woodrow Wilson’s and Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s goal of weakening the United States and its fundamental principles to the point of irrelevance, so that it can be absorbed into a transnational government.

From Theodore Roosevelt right through John McCain, Republican “leaders” have been leading us over a cliff into subservience to the UN or its equivalent, by promoting a politically-driven court system, an irrelevant, emasculated legislative branch, and real power concentrated in an enormous, unelected bureaucracy.

At least, Obama was honest when he told a campaign audience in Missouri, days before the election, that he was going to “transform this country.” That is just what he is doing. He is making more of what the progressives call “progress” toward transforming the United States of America into a post-Constitution, socialist pseudo-democracy in months, on its way to becoming a communist dictatorship, than his most ambitious predecessors made in nearly a century.

The Republicans, meanwhile, grouse and pout about his methods, and wonder what will be left of the multinational corporations to which they have traded their souls for cushy lobbying jobs after they earn their cushy Congressional retirements. Will the big bucks still be there by the time they resign, or Congress is dissolved by executive order, or they are voted out of office by a contingent of ACORN thugs and illegal aliens, or…

Sure, why not? Isn’t that what Republicans would have done if John McCain had accidentally won the election? And the loyal Republican base would be looking around, befuddled, wondering how this happened, and who is to blame.

HOMELAND SECURITY ISSUES

Are you (the former Republican voter, in my case) in favor of gutting the Patriot Act, and other […] laws that promote the safety and security of all Americans, blah, blah, blah?

Does it matter? We conservatives and Constitutionalists were in favor of a border fence, and it hasn’t been built. We still have the most porous border of any supposedly sovereign nation on earth, with thousands of illegals every week, including criminals and terrorists, pouring across like a continuous tidal wave.

Our Border Patrol agents are afraid to pick a place to go to lunch without the advice of an attorney, for fear of being blindsided by their administrators, or an Obama political operative. Bush gave them the back of his hand, as well. Ask former agents Ramos and Compean. Where was the RNC during that outrage?

We were adamantly and vocally opposed to laws that would allow illegal immigrants to stay and flourish on the taxpayers’ dime, and the titular leader of the Republicans was and is still promoting such laws.

Our troops are similarly hamstrung by stupid and self-defeating Defense Department policies, but the Obama administration is considering bringing the troops home to keep us in line, in the event of an emergency. What do you want to bet the civil rights hacks and community activists will be nowhere to be found when the troops get orders to bang on our doors and confiscate privately-owned firearms in some real, or ginned-up, national emergency?

Or, will that be left to Obama’s brownshirts, trained in “summer camps” at taxpayers’ expense to go out and throw their weight around, while the Republican Congressional leadership makes Elmer Fudd noises about being “vewy, vewy careful” with the civil rights of unfavored classes?

Are you in favor of air strikes against nations that harbor terrorists, and space-based missile defense?

Will any defense system ever get out of Congress without political and international law restraints so tight as to render it useless? Will Republicans care enough to do anything beyond casting safe, timid votes, and shrugging their shoulders in resignation when the Democrats bury them under procedural maneuvers? Will the Obama administration ever sign off on any air strike that doesn’t take out Israel or Taiwan? Not before consulting with Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, certainly. In other words, all questions about defense policy are moot.

FINALLY, THE INEVITABLE APPEAL FOR MONEY

I would go on, but I can’t stand it anymore. Besides, about all that’s left is the appeal for money, which was the point of the mailing in the first place. If I can’t give them $500, how about giving them $250? Hah.

Their last stand is, “However, I have enclosed $12 to cover the cost of tabulating my survey.” Shoot, if they can’t tabulate a stinking survey for a lot less than $12, they’re no better qualified to govern than the Democrats. But, we already knew that, didn’t we?

Besides, they’ll ignore the results and go with the path of least resistance anyway, so, what’s the point? I’d rather set a pile of money on fire, or spend it on a much more worthwhile cause, like buying somebody a copy of The 5000 Year Leap.

“His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular”. (Wikipedia)

I’ll miss the Constitution.

Ron Paul and the rest of the feathers out at the tip of the right wing have been telling us for years it was going to happen, and we who paid attention knew something bad was happening, but we had jobs, and lives, and TV series to worry about, and it went on around us while we expressed concern, but not alarm.

I should now be alarmed, but it may be too late. Darn.

The left runs Washington, and state and local governments hardly matter, as long as they are in substantial compliance with the federal standards that apply to just about everything. Our fearless leaders in Washington dug the open-pit trap the economy fell into, and now they step up to the microphone with “solutions” that involve handing the economy a shovel. Of course, the underlying purpose is power.

The consolidation of power has always been the agenda of “leaders” of both parties, and of most of their agents in government.

“Global Warming” (on this January night when the temperature will probably drop past zero, F, here in sunny Tennessee), is now also known as “Global Climate Change,” because that covers about everything the climate is likely to do, and anything it may do is cause for consolidating power in government. By any name, it is nothing but a pretext for grabbing power. Not just electric power, or nuclear power; political power.

If the government can say who will be able to generate the “pollutant” Carbon Dioxide, the government can say who will use electricity, or natural gas, or oil, or coal — who will generate or use energy. When you get down to it, that gives the government the power do decide who breathes, but that will come later.

If you remember your elementary school science — that is, if you studied it before it consisted of learning how to recycle aluminum cans and put on a condom — everything is made of energy. Matter is energy, if you divide it up small enough. Everything we are, and everything we do, involves the conversion of energy from one form to another.

A drop of gasoline (chemical energy) explodes in an engine cylinder (heat energy) and moves the family car along (mechanical energy). Crowd some Uranium atoms a little close for comfort, and they give off energy, which can be used as heat to turn a turbine, and run a generator. Of course, that only happens on a large scale in France, Iran, and other countries in which the Left thinks it is OK to allow nuclear energy to be used for “peaceful” purposes. Not in America.

Once you have a stranglehold on the generation and use of energy, you have a stranglehold on people. Let’s just suppose that, on this sub-zero night over a large swath of the United States, the feds decide to provide a little object lesson about how the Constitution is no longer a limit on government power. It would be a little brazen for President for Life Obama to instruct everyone to hold his or her breath for a few minutes, just to get an idea of what it would be like to be prohibited from emitting the bad pollutant CO2. Might be a little hard to enforce, too, at this early stage in the Administration.

No, let’s just “accidentally” turn off the power to some states that didn’t go “blue” in the last election, but they’re going “blue” now, from sub-zero temperatures. Not for long; just for a few hours — say, overnight. The first time, anyway. Maybe, they will offer some half-hearted explanation about a squirrel getting into the transformer, and the dang computers shut everything down, dumb computers, or Christian fundamentalist terrorists, or something. But don’t try too hard to be convincing, because the point is to make a subtle threat.

See? If you don’t play by the new rules, will the Constitution keep you warm? (Maybe you could burn your copy of the Bill of Rights on the kitchen table. That’ll last a minute or two.) Yes, your wood stove may tide you over for a few days without power, but a passing car carrying a government official might just see smoke coming from the chimney. A DEA helicopter might be scanning in the infrared for indoor hydroponic pot farms, and see the heat coming from your fire. Whoa, we can’t have that, can we? Spewing CO2 out into the publicly-owned air, melting glaciers and drowning polar bears? Tsk.

You’ll have to put that fire out, and schedule an appointment for the environmental impact study on your wood stove. What? Didn’t know you needed one? Well, it’s a new rule, and the standards are pretty stringent. In fact, Obama plans to apply the same environmental impact standards to your wood stove that he promised he would use to drive the coal-fired generating plants into bankruptcy. He just signed an executive order, putting the new standards into effect as soon as he takes the oath of office, where he tries not to roll his eyes when he swears to “uphold the Constitution.”

And, don’t expect to make a big, dramatic stand, holding off the EPA SWAT team with your firearms. That won’t last long, either. The UN wants us to get rid of them, for world peace. The EPA SWAT team will be armed to the teeth, but civilians need to be disarmed, because they just can’t be trusted with such dangerous instruments. First thing you know, people will be trying to band together and prevent the government from doing something that is for our own good. We are too dumb to understand that, sometimes, unpleasant things must be done to individuals for the good of the majority. People will just hurt themselves, if they have guns. And, after all, the darn things do emit CO2 when firing.

Suppose not enough of us get the point the first few times the power goes off? The weather might decide to give us a break (at least during Barack’s first term), and quit trying to kill us for a while. Think we’re home free? Well, how much food do you have stored away? Sure, you can boil stream water on the wood stove, until they come for that, but how long can you go without food? Do you have any idea how much energy is consumed to plant, grow, process and distribute food? How long will you last if that energy is cut off? Tractors and trucks burn petroleum products; canneries and processing plants use energy, stores have to have refrigeration and lights…

Forget Hoodia and Oprah’s latest diet scheme. Try the Stalin Diet! Tens of millions reduced their energy needs to next to nothing in Russia, that way. Yes, there was energy consumed in decomposition, but that can be dealt with. That’s what mass graves are for! The survivors and their neighbors in the politically favored areas of the late Soviet Union were quite impressed, and strongly persuaded that the government was right.

People who grow their own food use energy, too. Remember that Roto-tiller? It’s a gas hog! Are you keeping a cupboard full of winter squash, carrots, canned goods and dried foods that will last for months? That might be considered hoarding, you know. People in “public housing” (and eventually, if the “emergency” goes on long enough, “refugee camps”) might eat pretty well on the food you are selfishly keeping for your own family. Remember, a few may have to suffer for the good of the many. Once they leave with your firearms, expect the truck to come back for your “hoarded” food.

What the hell, you’ll probably be moving into big “public housing” complexes anyway. Concentrated housing is more energy-efficient, you see, and makes better use of land, according to UN standards. Yes, the complexes may be surrounded by tall, chain-link fences with razor wire and bright lights, and guard towers, but that’s just for your safety. Can’t have people smuggling in guns or fattening foods, can we? Goodness, no. Outside of the concentration ca– I mean, the public housing complexes, will be plenty of government-mandated green spaces, of course. The UN is big on green spaces, and so are the planning commissions in California, and the rest of the country. You’ll be able to glance out at the green spaces through the chain-link fence, on your way from your apartment block to your government-mandated job.

All employment, see, will be government-controlled, because, when you control energy, you control industry and business, and well, who knows better where you should be spending your time than your government? Heck, you live in public housing, you eat public food, and drink public water, why shouldn’t you be happy to work in the public sector? Who better to determine where your skills will do the most public good, than the public employment service?

Yes, as there always is in government health care, there will be temporary shortages of medicines, medical devices and health care professional services. After all, why would anyone become a health care professional, to make the same money as a sniper in a guard tower, or a low-emissions crematorium attendant, according to the government pay schedule? Some of us will be required to step up, and make sacrifices, for the good of the many. Is that diabetes medication costing more, lately? Is that cardiac bypass going to put the clinic over budget for January? Euthanasia is so much cheaper, and unborn children are just “lumps of tissue,” right? Nip that cost item in the bud. Save energy!

Wow, I can’t wait to live in President for Life Barack Obama’s Brave, New, Post-Constitutional World. Of course, I probably won’t be around long. I already feel guilty about being white, a natural-born citizen (unlike Obama) , middle-aged, and a CO2 emitter. It’s only a matter of time before I have to step up, get in the game, do my part.

Hey, did the lights just flicker? I hope the power stays on long enough to see tonight’s crucial episode of my favorite TV show.

I was thinking about “choice,” today, and the victory of the Left over common sense, as evidenced by seeing people on the Right refer to abortion zealots as, “pro-choice.” Is there anything more ironic than the “pro-choice” position?

It’s the position that certain unborn children, at the discretion of their mothers, should be deprived of absolutely every choice they might be allowed or required to make over the course of their whole lives. Why? Because their mothers chose to kill them before they could even choose whether to cry, or sleep, or eat.

That’s “pro-choice?”

They might choose to vote Democrat, or to become “community organizers,” or to join PETA, or the PTA, or to become officers in Obama’s “civilian militia” — but they can’t — because they’re dead.

Their options do not exist, because their mothers chose, for any reason, or for no reason, to let them be killed before they could make that first, inconsequential choice. A million and a half human beings a year, are dead for any reason, or for no reason, other than “the right to choose.”

A lifetime of choices, from the trivial to the momentous — so many choices — caf or decaf, smoking or non, SUV or hybrid, urban or rural, abstinent or promiscuous, idealistic or pragmatic… How many choices is that, over a whole life that was “choiced” away, times a million and a half lives a year?

And that’s “pro-choice?”

No. That’s a lie.

It’s anti-choice; it’s pro-death, and we should never, ever call it “pro-choice.”

As a retired information technology worker, I find it convenient to organize some kinds of information into rows and columns, like a spreadsheet. It helps me get my mind around a complex topic.

While examining one such topic, environmentalism, I discovered that environmentalists can be divided into three general categories (spreadsheet columns): Pragmatists, Primitivists, and Watermelons. The three types address two, exemplary environmental problems – global warming and ozone depletion (spreadsheet rows) — and their solutions, very differently.

Theodore Roosevelt, a pragmatists who became an obnoxious Progressive (Wikipedia)

Pragmatists tend to follow the example of Teddy Roosevelt, an asthmatic city boy who developed a passion for understanding nature through science and personal experience. While developing enough respect for natural wonders to create the country’s first national parks, he saw man as the dominant species, and nature as his domain, to be exploited responsibly, but not to be destroyed needlessly.

Pragmatists seek to strike a balance between human needs and natural beauty, believing that, with recourse to accurate, scientific data, humanity can benefit from nature without destroying it, and vice versa.

TR, unfortunately, set a strong precedent for government expropriating land for “public” use that was for esthetic reasons, rather than for meeting the nations practical needs — construction of fortresses, bridges, and other necessary evils. He did stop well short of turning the nation’s largest and most easily exploited sources of energy into untouchable preserves, however, leaving those morally-indefensible acts of government grand theft to later Progressives.

Pragmatists want to see objective evidence of global warming and ozone depletion, and to identify the most likely causes of these phenomena, before they entertain government policies meant to remedy them. Pragmatists become excited in the short term by the environment, if they find themselves at the foot of an erupting volcano, or in the path of a tornado, but otherwise, they tend to be focused calmly on the long term.

The romanticized “Indian,” emblem of the Primitivist ideal — the Unicorn, mascot of idealist nature-worshipers everywhere, was not available. (Wikipedia)

Primitivists have no use for science, other than political science, and its ugly, bastard son, junk science. Their ideal world is one from which humans and their civilization have been erased, or, better yet, one in which they never existed at all. If asked, they will admit to a desire to see about 99% of the world’s human population disappear, except for themselves and a few close friends with a similar orientation.

The most extreme Primitivists believe that human life is no more valuable than the life of an insect or a plant, and that the idea of exploiting an animal or a plant to extend or improve the life of a human is immoral and selfish. In their more tempered state, primitivists envision a romantically idealized harmony in the relationship of man and nature.

Their emblem of this ideal is the romanticized American Indian (whom they, of course, call a “Native American,” as if that phrase did not mean, literally, “one who was born in America”). This mythical character lives frugally and gently with the land, worshiping it as a god, seeing spirituality in every tree and rock. One assumes these characters would not build casinos and duty-free liquor stores in their pristine estates, or profit from the sale of mineral rights therefrom.

Primitivists accept global warming and ozone depletion without question, because these phenomena only serve to confirm their belief that man is a burden on nature, and that he will destroy it if allowed. Their remedy is simple and straightforward. Abort the unborn ones, and let the born ones freeze, bake and starve to death, and return their biodegradable packaging to the environment.

Green on the outside, but RED on the inside (Wikipedia)

Watermelons are pragmatic, too, in their own way. Having been exposed as hypocrites or fools, these believers in a bankrupt, failed ideology that calls for government ownership of everything, had to find another rock under which to hide. Environmentalism is the perfect refuge for communists, because it allows those who are red on the inside to put a layer of green on the outside, and continue to spread their toxic theology. In the 21st Century, environmentalism is the last bastion of people who think private property is The Man’s way of oppressing the downtrodden.

In the Watermelon’s view, people are not entirely evil. A certain number of them are required to drive the party elite in their limousines from the halls of power to their dachas in the woods, to cook their gourmet meals, and to fight and die in the interest of preserving and expanding their empires.

However, the history of socialism in the 20th Century includes a laudable amount of population control in the form of purges. The big-name socialist utopias lightened Mother Earth’s burden of humanity by a hundred million or so, in the interest of the state. While an unfortunate quantity of lead and carbon dioxide had to be introduced to the environment by firing squads, cattle trains and tanks, most of these deaths were accomplished with lower environmental impact — mass starvation and death by slave labor, predominating.

In the 21st Century, Communist China has recently taken the lead in recycling. Environmentally responsible Chinese leaders now harvest the skin, corneas and internal organs of the political prisoners they execute, and sell them on the open market. While this practice carries the unsavory taint of capitalism, watermelons believe any country that not only allows abortion, but requires it, must have its heart in the right place.

Watermelons readily embrace global warming and ozone depletion as crises, because the “solutions” for them involve government regulation of private industry. While not entirely satisfactory, government regulation of industry is a step in the right direction — toward the Watermelons’ ultimate goal: government ownership of industry.

Watermelons believe the best way to relieve human overcrowding (between purges) is to build large, ugly, concrete apartment blocks in major cities. Then, they force people selfish enough to live in their own homes to surrender these anachronisms to the state and move into the apartments. Problem solved.

Appalling tales of the worst environmental disasters on earth – horrible nuclear accidents and wholesale contamination of large areas with industrial poisons, perpetrated by communist states – do nothing to curb the Watermelons’ appetite for government control. After all, environmentalism is just a convenient form of cover for a Watermelon, not a real ideology.

The real goal of the Watermelon is, and always has been, government control of every aspect of life, from before birth, up to and including death. Individual humans are just too stupid to be trusted with running their own lives, and if they have to be sold on communism by bait-and-switch, well, so be it.

There you have it. I promised a spreadsheet, with rows and columns. Here it is:

Pragmatists

Primitivists

Watermelons

Global Warming

Identify real problems; Propose real solutions.

Let people freeze to death in the dark.

Abort or purge most people; forcibly relocate the rest and run their lives. Dominate the world.

[Author’s Note: The following, although written in July, 2003, is distressingly relevant. Change a few names and titles, and the truth is still true.]

What the heck is a SILRL Project? SILRL stands for Search for Intelligent Life in the Republican Leadership. It was my ongoing effort to discover some guiding intelligence in what passes for leadership in the Republican Party. I’m not talking about the kind of “intelligence” that Hollywood celebrities and Bill Clinton have — the mindless instinct for self-preservation and self-promotion based on saying what one thinks people want to hear. I’m talking about wisdom based on established principles, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I have reluctantly concluded that there is no intelligence to be found in the Republican leadership, and that further searching is a waste. The SILRL Project is now officially over, a failure.

Sometime in 1997, it became clear that the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 was more cosmetic than revolutionary. There is a disappointing pattern to Republican behavior at the leadership level. The umpteenth time I heard a Republican big shot on conservative talk radio say, “When we have a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress, we’ll (abolish the Education Department, rein in the IRS, impeach traitorous judges, protect unborn children, re-establish Constitutional law, etc.),” I realized I was listening to a fund-raising ploy, and nothing more.

The only time the spineless fat cats in the Republican leadership make conservative noises is when they need money and time from us conservative grassroots types to get themselves re-elected. Between campaign seasons, we are noisy, unsophisticated bumpkins, who naively insist on adherence to some obscure historical document called the Constitution.

The Big Elephants cluck their tongues at us, and mutter about how we don’t seem to understand that, “politics is the art of the possible.” Translated into everyday English, that means, “Politics is the art of saying and doing what we need to say and do to get re-elected. What’s right and Constitutional is, well, ‘relative.’ Relatively unimportant, compared to getting re-elected.”

There are about a dozen, real, Constitutional conservatives among national Republican officeholders and party leaders, and the rest might as well be Democrats, or Socialists, for that matter. There is little, practical difference.

Ronald Reagan, while discussing why he left the Democratic Party of his youth, said something like, “I didn’t really leave them; they left me.” The old-time champions of the “little guy,” the everyday American, had become the New Deal, big-government socialists, with the apparent intent to federalize just about everything, from first-grade textbooks to flush toilets. They turned the act of killing unborn children from murder into a civil right, stripped the right of self-defense from individual citizens, and made institutionalized racism a federal policy to make up for decades of institutionalized racism. With few exceptions, the Republican minority carped, but went along.

Most establishment Republicans seem to want what the socialist Democrats want, but, more slowly, and with less overt impact on the stock market. In recent decades, the Republican party has become “democrat socialist lite.”

The enormous expansion of the Department of Education, usurping the control of schools from communities and addicting them to federal funds, while doing nothing to improve the quality of education, is but one example of Republican statism. The recent spasm of effort to subsidize prescription drugs with taxpayers’ money, in exchange for the votes of “seniors,” will increase dramatically the cost of health care, while reducing quality and stifling innovation. With a few exceptions, Republicans are on board, if only because (they hope) they will get more polite treatment, along with a few campaign dollars, from the AARP crowd.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has turned out to be every bit as spineless and ineffectual as Trent Lott, and at least as willing to sacrifice principle for political success as Bob Dole. For a chance to appear on camera back-slapping with flatulent hacks like Byrd and Kennedy, and starry-eyed socialist utopians like Boxer and Clinton, Frist is willing to pledge our future incomes to the World Bank and our property rights to the Sierra Club.

This is the big jackpot the Republican leadership promised grassroots conservatives back in ’94. We who are not overjoyed are just being ingrates.

America is now becoming a socialist state, where individual freedom and responsibility, along with property rights and the sanctity of life, are anachronisms — obstacles on the road to “sustainable development” and “social justice.” And the Republican leadership is showing us the way. The Search for Intelligent Life in the Republican Leadership has been abandoned, because there is none to find. I’m taking my search to the right wing of the Libertarian party, next.